Why Carly Gave Up Her Vegan Diet – And The Truth About Healthy Food

Today Carly is joining us to tell us all about her experiences transitioning away from a vegan diet. I love her story as it’s very similar to my own story and she puts in to words everything I’ve been wanting to write about since I wrote my post, Goodbye Healthy Veganismrecently. Whatever type of diet you are following I really hope you get as much benefit from this post as I did.

Hi, I’m Carly & it’s time I tell my story, my journey – I hope it helps you on yours.

This is simply my personal experience with food. I was never a huge meat eater. I can recall having meat on the dinner table and asking my mom to cut it up into perfect little pieces so there were no veins, skin, bones or anything that would remind me that I was eating an animal. I wanted to disassociate between the food I was putting in my mouth and the fact that it had once been a living, breathing animal.

At 18, when I left to go away for college, I started eating more of a vegetarian diet. I moved away from any meat products and filled my diet with whole grain, low-fat cereal, salads, veggie wraps & hoagies (I went to school in Pennsylvania), diet soda, granola bars, frozen yogurt and vegetarian hot pockets.

At the time I honestly did believe I was being healthy but I was eating a highly processed, refined and acidic diet. As you could imagine, I quickly began to gain weight and my skin was red, inflamed and irritated.

Now, I wasn’t feeling so well either, but I was living in a town with 40,000 other 18-23 year olds having the time of my life, so at the time, I wasn’t too concerned with feeling all that well.

Going Vegan

It was 4 years later, when I moved to San Diego, that I started making shifts towards a healthier vegetarian diet. I started watching documentaries and educating myself on the cruelties of factory farming, which drove me further away from meat (documentaries worth watching: Earthlings, Food Inc, Fresh, The Future of Food).

I added tons more greens and vegetables into my diet but was still having cravings, so I added in more “meaty” things like faux meat, tofu and brown rice. During this time, I was also battling immense sugar cravings and would have frozen yogurt with fruit and granola on a regular basis.

In order to curb the sugar cravings, I decided to go vegan assuming I just wasn’t extreme enough, and that if I took all animal products out of my diet, I would finally reach this epic place of health and vitality that I wanted so bad.

Before I continue – Did you know Oreo’s are vegan?!

They are so processed that there isn’t even any real dairy products in them. Cream-filling?!

I think not.

As a vegan, I initially saw huge benefits in my health; I felt connected to my body in a way I never had before. I was predominately eating food from the Earth and this allowed me to recognize what my cravings were – instead of sugar I realized I was actually craving high quality fat, water, a walk, a friend to talk to, or a list of other things my body (or heart) was asking for.

I developed a deep and connected relationship with my body and I could hear the messages clearly. I truly had an experience with knowing that my body can only perform based off the quality of food I choose to fuel it with.

As a vegan, I lost the college weight, my skin began to glow, my spiritual practices were deeper, and I went from a love/hate relationship with my body to a love/love relationship. It was incredible. I continued my vegan/vegetarian diet for a few years, until I started to see my health and vitality deteriorate again – I had hit a plateau and was having dreams of eating meat.

Giving Up A Vegan Diet

In 2012, I decided to embrace good old-fashioned meat, and overnight, I added in animal protein and more fat than I ever thought was “safe” to eat – I feasted on chicken, pork, beef, coconut, raw dairy, eggs (yolk and all ::gasp!::), avocado, and butter.

The effects were instant. Within 2 days of eating meat again, I felt strong and grounded in a way I hadn’t felt in many years. I felt like all the energy literally drained from the constant swirl around my head and flowed evenly throughout my body; my head was clear and alert.

I felt as though I had the ability to take on more in my life because I had the fortitude, strength, and clarity to step out powerfully into the world.

By adding in high quality fat & removing all forms of gluten, I felt satiated in an entirely new way (goodbye low-fat chemical-laden foods, you taste like crap anyway!) – I actually felt full and could walk away from food without thinking about it for another 3-5 hours. I remember going years and years as a vegetarian feeling constantly hungry because of all the carbohydrates in my diet.

It was like coming back to life again; I felt energized and invigorated.

The Power Of Real Food

And then I started to wonder why MORE people didn’t eat this way…the way nature intended; REAL FOOD. Real food consisting of humanely raised grass-fed meat, raw dairy, vegetables and fruits that are local and seasonal, whole grains, unrefined oils & fats; the food that has been in our world for millions of years.

“What is real food? Real foods are old. These are foods we’ve been eating for a long time – in the case of meat, fish, and eggs, for millions of years. Some real foods, such as butter, are more recent. It’s not absolutely clear when regular dairy farming began, but we’ve been eating butterfat for at least ten thousand years, perhaps as many as forty thousand. By contrast, margarine – hydrogenated vegetable oil made solid and dyed yellow to resemble traditional butter – is a modern invention, merely a century old. Margarine is not a real food. I believe the experts are wrong; the real culprits in heart disease are not traditional foods but industrial ones, such as margarine, powdered eggs, refined corn oil, and sugar. Real food is good for you.”

The Truth About Healthy Food

I began to research; I wanted to know everything there was to know about this new way of living. I learned all about the Paleo movement and Weston A Price.

I learned all about how raw diary can be incredibly healthy for the body, and how the industrial food system is essentially poisoning us.

We’ve been lied to in the name of profit, and quite frankly, I got annoyed!

In Know Your Fats, Mary Enig writes: “Cholesterol is used by the body as a raw material for the healing process. This is the reason injured areas in the arteries (as in atherosclerosis) or the lungs (as in tuberculosis) have cholesterol along with several other components in the ‘scar’ tissue [they’ve] formed to heal the ‘wound.” “This would explain why high LDL is sometimes linked to heart disease.

Many people with heart disease have damaged arteries, and cholesterol travels on LDL to heal them. Just because you see fire fighters at burning buildings does not mean they start fires.” This concept BLEW MY MIND!

And this is just the tip of the iceberg…the more I read, studied, and researched, the more I saw an entirely new world of health, nutrition, and wellness present itself. I was hooked. I even felt relieved that I could STILL be an animal lover and eat meat. I could choose to eat organic, grass-fed, local meat raised on a farm and take a stand against animal cruelty and factory farms by eating consciously raised animals. I am happier and healthier because of it. I decided to become a Health Coach so I could learn and learn and learn and turn around and empower you as well.

I absolutely acknowledge that making dietary and lifestyle shifts to feel energized, burn fat, and glow from the inside out is a huge undertaking in our over-processed, self-medicated culture.

I know that it’s much easier to put the frozen meal in the microwave or visit the drive-through as opposed to visiting the farmer’s market and preparing a home-cooked meal.

I know for the first time in my entire life, I have a healthy, respectful, loving relationship with food. I feel strong and confident in my body, I look forward to creating new and delicious meals in the kitchen, and I feel light, radiant, and clear.

I have a dream that all people will have access to food that serves and empowers them, that our animals will be treated with humility and kindness, and that deadly chemicals and pesticides will be eradicated from the food system.

Carly Shankman is a certified Holistic Health Coach on a mission to create a happier, healthier world through whole food nutrition. She believes that mental, spiritual and physical health are not exclusive of one another. Connect with Carly on her website,Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.

Can you relate to Carly’s story? What type of diet do you follow? Please comment below.

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Comments

Loved this Carly!! Thanks so much for always being honest and open in your relationship to food. It helps so many others to embrace their own style, body and diet of choice. A true self-love warrior. xo

Eating vegan takes a lot of creativity with food. Why did you finally include coconut oil and avocados when you added meat back? My vegan diet is probably something that most people couldn’t follow, but it’s the only way for me. I eat no processed foods, no sugar. Lots of avocados, ground seeds and nuts, greens, veggies, fruit and beans. The bulk of what I eat is protein. I’ll have a half cup of ground seeds with greens and avocados. Beans and avocados for breakfast. My hair is thicker and my skin looks amazing. I’ve been going over a year now. I think to truly eat vegan people have to put more energy into their relationship with food than our modern world allows. It was a worthy sacrifice.

I read the article from start to finish and I have been vegan for 9 years.healthy, happy and going strong! You talk about real food – dairy is not a real food for you because you are not a calf or any other non-human animal. Your body at 3 years of age stopped producing the enzyme necessary to break down milk protein that your mother produced! Humanely killed animals is an oxymoron where there flesh is still toxic to our natural pH inside. Why did you only add avocadoes when you returned to eating animals?? Fish, the race with the highest consumption of fish, Inuits, are riddled with osteoporosis – a disease that science has contributed to dairy.

This article suggests paleo – another way of life that has been deemed not healthy. Yes, we can all eat processed foods from time to time and deep fried spuds and drink fizzy drinks – we are not perfect but to write and ask people to follow your dream of using and killing animals is wrong!

When was Paleo deemed not healthy? To be honest, I don’t think you understand what Paleo means. First of all, Paleo excludes dairy. Second, people try to apply their ethical principles to nature that had been working just fine without them for millions of years! Animals had been eating animals long before there were humans on this planet. Animals didn’t worry about humanity and the planet was healthy. Now here come the humane humans and the planet is on its death row. Isn’t it funny? We pollute everything with chemicals (because using animal products is wrong), we throw eco-systems out of balance (because we think it’s wrong for animals to die while there’s no way around it: all living things die eventually), we think we know better while we are just another animal species and we should be concerned about playing by the nature’s rules instead of making up our own. So yes, there is a humane way to kill an animal, it’s called hunting. All carnivors and omnivors do it and people are omnivors. What we are not is grain and bean eaters. Human body can’t digest raw grains and beans, while raw meat is still beneficial (just not as tasty as cooked). So guys, stop making stuff up. People are just animals and should behave accordingly, meaning eat the food the nature has made for them, which does include animals but does not include a lot of vegan stuff which first has to be cooked and processed to even become OK for a human to consume.

P.S. Osteoporosis is caused by grain consumption because grains have phytic acid that prevents human body from absorbing nutrients, including calcium and whatever else the body needs to rebuild its tissues. By the way, collagen is very good in that department. When you discover a vegetable containing collagen, let me know, I’ll be all over it.

Thank-you Lauren! The evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of a vegan diet! What about the reversals in heart disease seen by Dr. Caldwell and Dean Ornish? Meat causes disease of all sorts and that has been unequivocally proven!

It’s funny to me, reading articles like this and the resulting comments. Like watching warring factions trying to out-health each other, throwing incredibly biased “studies” at each other to “prove” their disordered way of eating is the right way.

Honestly, your new way of looking at food sounds just as disordered as your old one. No one can have a healthy relationship with food while ascribing religious significance to it (“this food is REAL/CLEAN/PURE/HOLY!”). I’d love to actually find a blogger who’s come out of something as oppressive and occultish as Veganism and then NOT go on to look to strict localganic to make them pure. None of it is going to change who you are as a person, because you’re looking in the wrong place.

What the heckkkk! Meat and dairy causes cancer whether or not the cow was freaking grass fed. Do not buy into this crap everyone! Meat, dairy, and eggs are horrible for your health. Carly i would love for you to come back in 10 years or 20 years because it will catch up to you and you will get sick

I’d be delighted if you could pass on some serious scientific research that proves organic, grass fed meat and dairy definitely cause cancer, we are always interested in the latest scientific health research.

Dear Carly, I am interested in switching back to a meat diet from being a healthy long-term vegan, but am concerned about how much money I will be paid for shilling. You see, it’s not about the suffering of the animals for me at all. Just like you, I’m a selfish narcissistic whore and I want to get PAID!

Please, Carly, tell us your secrets… the animals are all DYING to hear your secrets too.

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